


a loyal knight and true

by lilith_morgana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is nothing to it but symmetry. Drabble-fic with knights and oaths and all that jazz.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a loyal knight and true

__

_"I am half sick of shadows," said  
The Lady of Shalott.   
_  
\------------------------

 

They come into the world as one; for the longest time their world is one, is _shared_. 

He trades his sword for her smile, his armour for a lock of her hair. Clad in gold and crimson she shines like a knight and Jaime promises her - _always_ and _never_ \- the words leaving his mouth without much effort. 

She goes to sleep with her head on his chest and her mouth over his heart, he wakes up with his knees pressed into her thighs where the sun falls in layers in the mornings. 

There is nothing to it but symmetry.

*

Mother was remarkable, they say.

Golden, they say. Proud. A lioness. 

Cersei tries to remember but her thoughts catch at the image of impossibly long hair, of hands the shape of wolves and mountain lions dancing in the shadows on the wall, of songs from an unforgotten childhood. 

In the depth of Jaime's eyes there's an echo of her and Cersei's fingers sprawled across his naked back mirror a memory they barely know they once had. But when they grasp hold of it again the loss becomes unbearable; only in the unbroken lines of their bodies can there be peace.

*

"You cannot be like Ser Dayne, you're the _heir_ ," Cersei points out but he doesn't listen, he never _listens_. At least not to her. She may be his sweet sister in every other room of the castle but tonight he's only got eyes for the men in the hall with their ridiculous tales of heroic deeds. It bores her out of her skull. She frowns, staring down into her bowl of soup.

Jaime laughs at something; the sound thunders against the walls. 

"Besides," she says after another mouthful of wine, trying to win back his attention, "You're not _that_ good."

*

Jaime bends the knee and joins the Kingsguard. Father doesn't speak for many hours.

"He is his mother's son," he says eventually and so quietly that Cersei isn't sure he means to say it out loud at all. She isn't certain what it means, either. She loved their mother but the thought of her, of her blood running thick in Jaime's veins - like some dark, unspeakable secret - is cold and unsettling as it spreads inside her. _He did it for me,_ she thinks. _I told him to._

They come into the world as one; she cannot quell him.

*

On the morning of Cersei's wedding, there’s an absence in their embrace, a hollow of future longing that memories cannot bridge.

When his fingers map out her curves and bones she thinks of open-mouthed kisses and chases leading into the empty heart of the Lion’s Mouth where the shape of them is imprinted on the stone. Thinks of constant motion and sudden stillness. The short-lived happiness right there: it's in Jaime's eyes as he looks at her, in the smile playing on his lips - not the cutting smile he offers others but _their_ smile, softer and gentler and sadder.

*

On the night of Cersei's wedding, Jaime swears a hundred oaths in the silence outside the king's bedchamber.

Always, he swears. Never. 

There are many words for the same thing and with his hands bloodied and his white cloak stained he's given up on all other purpose; and so he spends the hour of the wolf weaving threads that will bind him to this one cause, his one and true queen. Willing himself not to care for his pride, to never grieve the lack of honour. 

Around him the night is empty but his heart is full of stubborn conviction.

*

Robert's son is dead and Cersei brushes a strand of dark hair from his face. Her fingers look pale against his skin, against his lips that have turned a darker shade of blue, the colour of a bruise.

As she smoothes the sheet around him, she thinks of the body's hopeless fluidity; thinks of the art of becoming like stone, the irrevocable transformation, of Robert's son who lies there dead with his father's features.

_Forgive me_ , she thinks, but can't say. 

She cries over him once - sobs breaking in her chest - with her face against the hollow of Jaime's throat.

*

One more dead body between them, Cersei thinks in the cold North where her heart freezes over. It should not make a difference. In the vows they have taken in the dark, _nothing_ makes a difference except the two of them and the children, the family they have but are not allowed.

Perhaps it’s because the boy lives. Perhaps it’s a different story altogether. 

But in the harsh light of Winterfell the lines drawn around them, their invisible circles of protection dissolve in the fading sun. Even Jaime pales before it, shrinks beneath the golden plates that cannot protect them.

*

The White Sword Tower offers no revelations; the title to his name is meaningless in a different way.

He returns, long overdue, and finds that nothing truly has changed in his absence. He finds, too, that he had thought it would. But winter starves them, pits them against each other and he can't fight without his sword hand. 

And he finally cries - not for his son, not for his father, not for his wretched bloody hand, but for the endless hollows inside him that not even his sister can conceal as the stark light of winter drowns them all.

*

He teaches himself deviation.

He learns, in the broken kingdom he travels through, that names can be burned away, nearly forgotten or worn down through careless memories and a lack of determination. Every name but the one carved on your heart, the one that is pronounced _soul_ for lack of better words. 

He learns that the rebellion is everywhere, in every detail. That there's quiet uproar to behold in his thoughts about wrapping his hands around Brienne's shoulders, his arms around her waist. _I’m no saviour, Kingslayer._ But she is. 

He learns to see himself, reflected in her wide-open eyes.

*

Always, Jaime says and no one keeps a promise like her dear brother.

He will come for me, she thinks even as she stares out into the crowd, unbowed. _He's me; I'm not afraid._

He will come, she knows as the wind prickles her bare skin. A woman screams _harlot_ , three men burst out laughing and in the glimmering surface of a shield she catches a glimpse of that face, those particular slants and angles. She stops and gasps, _hoping_ for a heartbeat before the metal hardens the image and she's suddenly staring back at her own defeat. 

Cersei runs.

*

"Tell me about your sister?" the wench asks him as a fire is burning and they're decently full on broth and bread and warmed by wine.

"You truly wish to know?" 

She looks straight at him; her mouth seems soft in the dusk but her gaze is firm, strong. It's her asymmetry he finds both devastating and soothing. "Tell me about your sister."

In a strange land, death will have to be measured not in what you leave behind but in what you bring along; in the sharp-edged distances between them they bridge with piles of their dead and badly forgotten.

*

She asks him what they are. What this makes her.

He touches her, the pad of his thumb unearthing a scar. And he wants to stay here, exactly here, his fingers surrounded by her body, the hunger in her response wrapping itself around him harder than any oath he's ever sworn. 

_I want that_ , he thinks with a force that overwhelms him. The surprise, that tremble of her body beneath his, the misplaced innocence even as her fingers brush over his cock, as though she doesn't _truly_ understand what it does to him. 

It has no name; it _is_ everything.

*

They come into the world as one, only moments separate them.

"You would not dare to go without me," she tells him once, before he leaves with their lord father, their golden armour polished and their swords sharpened in their hilts. He kisses her palm when no one is watching, kisses the lines in it, the ones that mirrors his own. _Sweet sister. I would never leave you alone._

"Sweet sister," he says again now, harsher. There are tears in his eyes. 

They come into the world as one; she had never thought death would be so lonely.

*

At the first light of day they turn to each other in the narrow bed; _always_ , as simple as breathing.

His mouth grazes over her neck, leaves pale-red marks like favours; _I have earned it_ , he thinks half-asleep with her only a breath away and it's a broken, monumental thought that fills him with a kind of dread because everything you have earned you can lose again. Her fingers in his hair, around the back of his head; her too-broad shoulders and his stump of a hand. Her crooked smile, his endless sins. 

There is nothing to it but symmetry.


End file.
